Installation fails on Debian 13

[Ekolide]

Hello! I seem to be having a Qt dependency issue on a basic Debian 13 install with GNOME as my desktop environment.

When attempting to install the version for Ubuntu 25.10 I get the following error.

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  noteahead: Depends: libqt6core6t64 (>= 6.9.1) but 6.8.2+dfsg-9+deb13u1 is to be installed
             Depends: libqt6gui6 (>= 6.9.1) but 6.8.2+dfsg-9+deb13u1 is to be installed
             Depends: libqt6qml6 (>= 6.9.1) but 6.8.2+dfsg-7 is to be installed

The version for Ubuntu 24.10 simply says the dependencies are not able to be installed.

I guess it's a basic dependency, does Noteahead need Qt 6.9 or would modifying to 6.8 somehow work?

Let me know if you need more info.

Thanks,
Ekolide

[juzzlin]

Well, I'm now running Noteahead on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS that has Qt 6.4. That is the minimum requirement, so technically it should work just fine. It's just that the packages are being built on Ubuntu so they might not work directly on Debian - even though Ubuntu is based on Debian. The packages automatically depend on the exact library versions of the host they were built on.

What exactly happens if you try to install the archive for Ubuntu 24.04 ?

[juzzlin]

Ubuntu and Debian might also have named the libraries a bit differently and that's causing the problems.

[Ekolide]

I don't have it in front of me, but the Ubuntu 24.10 version says basically the same thing except it states, instead of my installed version, simply something like "this cannot be installed." It might have had a different name for the library, I'm not sure, I can check it later. Interestingly is that my Debian install seems to understand the difference in naming? Why else would it state that it has the library, but an earlier version? Is it something about an explicitly stated minimum version of Qt? Or something similar that makes apt throw an error?

…

On 28 April 2026 11:54:48 CEST, Jussi Lind ***@***.***> wrote: juzzlin left a comment (juzzlin/Noteahead#46) Ubuntu and Debian might also have named the libraries a bit differently and that's causing the problems.

[juzzlin]

Seems that the both archives indeed would want libqt6core6t64, so that's weird, yes.

Are you sure that the problem was Qt and not the other libs?

These are the libs the package for Ubuntu 24.04 would want:

qml6-module-qtcore, qml6-module-qtqml, qml6-module-qtqml-workerscript, qml6-module-qtquick, qml6-module-qtquick-controls, qml6-module-qtquick-dialogs, qml6-module-qtquick-layouts, qml6-module-qtquick-templates, qml6-module-qtquick-window, libc6 (>= 2.38), libgcc-s1 (>= 3.0), libjack-jackd2-0 (>= 1.9.10+20150825) | libjack-0.125, libqt6core6t64 (>= 6.4.0), libqt6gui6t64 (>= 6.4.0), libqt6qml6 (>= 6.2.0), libqt6quick6 (>= 6.2.0), librtaudio6 (>= 5.2.0~ds1), librtmidi6 (>= 5.0.0), libsndfile1 (>= 1.0.20), libstdc++6 (>= 13.1)

As a workaround, one option would always be to build Noteahead from sources, it's rather easy on Debian/Ubuntu.

[juzzlin]

This is the analysis by Gemini in Docker:

✦ Testing the Ubuntu 24.04 package on Debian 13 confirmed that it is currently incompatible due to
  library name changes and ABI breaks.

  Key Findings:

   1. Unmet Dependencies:
       * libqt6gui6t64: Debian 13 uses libqt6gui6 (without the t64 suffix in the package name).
       * librtaudio6 and librtmidi6: These versions are completely missing from the Debian 13
         repositories.

   2. Binary Incompatibility:
       * Debian 13 has moved to newer versions of these libraries: librtaudio7 and librtmidi7.
       * I attempted to bypass the dependency check and symlink the newer libraries to the older names,
         but the application failed to start with a symbol lookup error:
          undefined symbol: _ZN7RtAudioC1ENS_3ApiE
       * This confirms that librtaudio7 is not binary-compatible with librtaudio6.

So, it seems that the package for Ubuntu 24.04 is too old, and the package for Ubuntu 25.10 is too new for Debian 13. The rtmidi, rtaudio, and Qt versions have changed in an annoying way so that the are contradictory (for now).

I'll take a look if I could just link to these libraries statically.

[Ekolide]

Interesting! Thanks much!

…

On 28 April 2026 14:33:40 CEST, Jussi Lind ***@***.***> wrote: juzzlin left a comment (juzzlin/Noteahead#46) This is the analysis by Gemini in Docker: ``` ✦ Testing the Ubuntu 24.04 package on Debian 13 confirmed that it is currently incompatible due to library name changes and ABI breaks. Key Findings: 1. Unmet Dependencies: * libqt6gui6t64: Debian 13 uses libqt6gui6 (without the t64 suffix in the package name). * librtaudio6 and librtmidi6: These versions are completely missing from the Debian 13 repositories. 2. Binary Incompatibility: * Debian 13 has moved to newer versions of these libraries: librtaudio7 and librtmidi7. * I attempted to bypass the dependency check and symlink the newer libraries to the older names, but the application failed to start with a symbol lookup error: undefined symbol: _ZN7RtAudioC1ENS_3ApiE * This confirms that librtaudio7 is not binary-compatible with librtaudio6. ``` So, it seems that the package for Ubuntu 24.04 is too old, and the package for Ubuntu 25.10 is too new for Debian 13. The rtmidi, rtaudio, and Qt versions have changed in an annoying way so that the are contradictory (for now). I'll take a look if I could just link to these libraries statically.